Monday, June 2, 2008

ARCADIA — Ten illegal immigrants employed with the House of Raeford were arrested today in separate traffic stops in Arcadia as state police conducted a special enforcement detail at the request of Bienville Parish Sheriff John Ballance.

The immigrants, all Hispanic males, are being detained in the Bienville Parish Jail. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will pick them up Tuesday.

Additionally, a van loaded with other plant workers also suspected of being illegal immigrants emptied as state police stopped it at the plant’s entrance. “They all got out and ran. Two were seen running down the interstate,” the sheriff said.

The detention of the illegal aliens was not the intent of the enforcement effort. Ballance said he sought state police assistance in response to a recent fatality crash and other crashes involving property damage at the hands of unlicensed and uninsured drivers.

“The captain promised me they’d be here and off in June doing checkpoints at different locations. It was not intended that any particular group be targeted. … It just so happens that the time of the morning they worked today the plant was letting out and that’s all who were on the road,” Ballance said.

State troopers worked from 6 to 8 a.m. and stopped 18 vehicles. Twenty-one violations were recorded.